MOSCOW, DECEMBER 27 (from RIA Novosti correspondent Marina Uryvayeva) - Russia can abolish death penalty only after crime rates begin to subside. The abolition demands a gradual arrangement for executions eventually to go into oblivion, Valentin Kovalev, federal Minister of Justice, said to a news conference.

Only five crimes currently imply capital punishment. A hundred criminals sentenced to it have been pardoned to be imprisoned for life, and death sentences have been infinitely suspended for another hundred.

Crime rates have not displayed an increase since last March for the first time these last ten years. The rate of crimes against persons is spectacularly subsiding - which cannot be said of crimes against property, which remain rampant.

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Johnson's Russia List

7 January 1997

djohnson@cdi.org

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